Jason Leigh (Professor, Computer Science, University of Illinois at Chicago)

A lecture in the Show and Tell: Visualizing the Life of Mind seminar seriesMarch 5, 2013 | 3:00pm-4:30pmKathleen A. Zar Room, John Crerar Library

David Gelernter, in his 1992 landmark book Mirror Worlds, says,

“A Mirror World is some huge institution’s moving, true-to-life mirror image trapped inside a computer – where you can see and grasp it whole. The thick, dense, busy sub-world that encompasses you is also, now, an object in your hands… This software technology, in combination with high-speed parallel computers and computer networks, makes it possible to envision enormous, intelligent information reservoirs linking libraries and databases across the country or the world…The Mirror World is a wholeness-enhancing instrument; it is the sort of instrument that modern life demands. It is an instrument that you (almost literally) look through, as through a telescope, to see and grasp the nature of the organizational world that surrounds you.”

Global Cyber-Commons is the Electronic Visualization Laboratory’s instantiation of Mirror Worlds; it is the telescope that one uses to view and collect data from global resources. But Cyber-Commons goes beyond Mirror Worlds, bringing real people together, in real time to enable real collaboration. The goal is not just to mirror the “universe in a shoebox,” but to enable people worldwide to work together to create and learn from that world-in-a-box. The presentation will introduce the notion of the Cyber-Commons, the technology that drives it, and the types of research and educational activities that it has enabled.

BIOGRAPHYJason Leigh is a Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory and the Software Technologies Research Center at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Currently he is also a Fellow of the Institute for Health Research and Policy. Prior projects and research for which he is best known include, the OptIPuter, GeoWall, CoreWall, LambdaVision, Tele-Immersion, and Reliable Blast UDP. His research for the past ten years focused on Cyber-Commons- ultra-resolution display-rich collaboration environments amplified by high performance computing and networking. His newest area of research is called Human Augmentics – technologies for expanding the capabilities and characteristics of humans. His work in lifelike avatars has been featured on the Popular Science’s Future Of, and he has been profiled on Nova ScienceNow.===========================================================================

Show and Tell, Visualizing the Life of Mind is a new seminar series that focuses on the practical application, art and science of visualization in research and scholarship at The University of Chicago. The series is presented in the John Crerar Library Kathleen A. Zar room,a joint venture between the Research Computing Center and The University of Chicago Library to bring cutting edge data visualization capabilities to the research community.